Hugh Mercer

Hugh Mercer (17 January 1726-12 January 1777) was a Brigadier-General of the Continental Army of the United States. He fought in the War of the Austrian Succession, Seven Years' War, and the American Revolutionary War, and was killed in the Battle of Princeton in 1777.

Biography
Hugh Mercer was born in Pitsligo Kirk, Aberdeenshire, in Scotland. During the War of the Austrian Succession, he joined Bonnie Prince Charlie's rebellion against Great Britain in 1745 as a surgeon for his army. As a fugitive after the defeat at the Battle of Culloden, he fled to the Thirteen Colonies in 1747. After practicing medicine for many years, he joined the Colonial Militia during the Seven Years' War and served under General John Forbes during his war against the French in Pennsylvania. Mercer was made a colonel by 1758, and was left in charge of the British settlement of Fort Pitt, later known as Pittsburgh, after Forbes captured the city from the French following their ignition of the fort's magazines.

After the war's end in 1763, Mercer returned to medicine and ran an apothecary. In 1774, Colonel George Washington sold his childhood home of Ferry Farm (near Fredericksburg, Virginia) to Mercer, who planned to make it into a town. In 1775 he was appointed the colonel of a militia regiment when the United States became an independent country, and he fought under Washington as a Brigadier-General. He fought in New Jersey at Fort Lee and Trenton, and in 1777 he commanded a large portion of Washington's army at the Battle of Princeton. Mercer fought against Charles Mawhood's British rearguard, and was wounded in the fighting by bayonets and left for dead. Mercer was mortally wounded, and he died of his wounds shortly after the battle.